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NCAR Library and Archives Blog

NOAA has collected datasets of more than 170 years worth of every hurricane and cyclone detected, approximately 12,000, and created a map indicating their paths. Incorporating international mariner’s logs and storm records from 1842 and retrieving data from computer punch cards from the early mainframe computer age indicates some of the many challenges of this project. Where do you think the most storm activity is? Click here to find out.

AGU Blogosphere | “Cecilia Bitz, an associate professor in Atmospheric Sciences at the University of Washington in Seattle, discusses how the wording and length of paper titles can affect their impact within the scientific community. To get some answers about that impact, she hunted down some data and prepared a modest but revealing analysis”. More details here.

In keeping with the mission of the NCAR Library to serve and support Atmospheric, Solar and Earth scientists and their research at UCAR/NCAR/UCP, the Library has developed a survey to ask for your critical input to plan future services and programs. We can’t improve without your help! The survey should take approximately 15 minutes of your valuable time and can be accessed via the Library, Archives and OpenSky websites or this link. We appreciate your interest and support.

Astronomy & Astrophysics (A&A) journal has set up a page that lists all Open Access (OA) options they currently offer. Most importantly, all articles are freely accessible at the latest 12 months after publication. Some articles are OA immediately, like all Letters to the Editor and articles published in the online-only sections. The full list is available. The NCAR Library subscribes to this journal and it can be accessed via the Library website.

Climate informatics broadly refers to any research combining climate science with approaches from statistics, machine learning and data mining. The Climate Informatics workshop series, now in its third year, seeks to bring together researchers from all of these areas. We aim to stimulate the discussion of new ideas, foster new collaborations, grow the climate informatics community, and thus accelerate discovery across disciplinary boundaries. All researchers interested in learning about critical issues and opportunities in the field of climate informatics are invited, whether established in the field or just starting out. The workshop takes place on September 26 - 27, 2013, hosted by the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), Boulder, Colorado. Registration information and agenda are available. Travel fellowships are available and will be awarded competitively upon review of the submitted abstracts.

AGU | “Smartphones are a great way to check in on the latest weather predictions, but new research aims to use the batteries in those same smartphones to predict the weather. A group of smartphone app developers and weather experts created a way to use the temperature sensors built into smartphone batteries to crowdsource weather information. These tiny thermometers usually prevent smartphones from dangerously overheating, but the researchers discovered the battery temperatures tell a story about the environment around them”. Read more >.

A report published in Science online journal today documents that seasonal carbon dioxide range is expanding as more CO₂ is added to the Earth’s atmosphere. The report entitled, “Enhanced Seasonal Exchange of CO₂ by Northern Ecosystems Since 1960” (DOI: 10.1126/science.1239207) comes from a multi-year airborne survey of atmospheric chemistry called HIAPER Pole-to-Pole Observations (HIPPO). The National Science Foundation (NSF), along with the U.S. Department of Energy, the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the Office of Naval Research funded the study.

Annually, the Library of Congress gathers leading experts and institutions to gain insight as to emerging technological trends, gaps in digital stewardship capacities and opportunities for future work for digital preservation professionals, decision-makers and others interested in ongoing management of digital content. The result is the publication of the National Agenda for Digital Stewardship (NSDA). The Agenda outlines the challenges and opportunities related to digital preservation activities in four broad areas: Organizational Roles, Policies, and Practices; Digital Content Areas; Infrastructure Development; and Research Priorities. In addition, this report identifies the need to develop a “shared evidence base” that can facilitate research and developing sound infrastructures and policy. Over the coming year the NDSA will work to promote the Agenda and explore educational and collaborative opportunities with all interested parties. An Executive Summary is also available.

On July 19, 2013, NASA’s Cassini orbiter snapped this historic image of the Earth while on the far side of the giant ringed planet, Saturn. No surface features are discernible since the Earth is nearly 900 million miles (1.5 billion kilometers) away, however, its unique blue tinge caused by sunlight reflecting off the planet's oceans is very apparent.

On that day, NASA invited the public to join in the celebration of this event by asking all to wave at the ringed planet at specific times and sharing pictures over the Internet. More than 20,000 people around the world participated. Did you?

A new study, Anthropogenic aerosol forcing of Atlantic tropical storms, recently published in the Nature Geoscience Letter, raises “the possibility that external factors, particularly anthropogenic aerosols, could be the dominant cause of historical tropical storm variability, and highlight the potential importance of future changes in aerosol emissions”. Nick Dunstone, lead author of the study states, “The models show that aerosols have a bigger influence than we thought”. Figures and supplementary information is available within the article.

Photos from the Archive

About This Blog

The NCAR Library and Archives serve and support Atmospheric, Solar and Earth scientists and their research at NCAR and throughout the broader UCAR community. We are interested current trends around scientific data management, open access, scholarly communications, digital preservation and tracking the impact of our science through bibliometrics.

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The National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) is sponsored by the National Science Foundation. Any opinions, findings and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this publication are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.